One
of my early assignments as a young reporter was the gasoline beat. A year after
I went to work for the newspaper, prices began rising because of the Arab oil
embargo, and in early 1974 there were a few weeks when supplies were so scarce
there were block-long lines at gas stations. There was widespread fear that prices could go up to a dollar a gallon.
Those were the days.
It’s
been more than 30 years since we had to wait in line to buy gas, and today’s
higher prices, adjusted for inflation, are not much more than we paid 40 years
ago. But gasoline prices still exert a powerful, and irrational hold on the
American imagination.
To
put it another way, people are crazy when it comes to matters that affect their
ability to drive. They take the worst traffic experience they’ve ever had on a
stretch of road and turn it into the commonplace. They cancel a two thousand
dollar driving vacation because the increase in gas prices would have driven up
the cost by thirty dollars. They are susceptible to paranoid conspiracy
theories about how gas would be a dollar a gallon if the oil companies weren’t
manipulating the prices.
And
I am being charitable here. If you look at the things people believe about
traffic and gas prices, you would be hard pressed to argue that man is a
rational animal.
The
delusionary behavior begins with things that are matters of demonstrable fact.
I actually keep records of such things and can attest that the price of gas at
the station closest to my home on March 30 was slightly less than 8 percent
above a year ago. Yet I’ve seen several quotes from news stories and several
letters to the editor claiming that prices have doubled in the last year. How
does 8 percent go to 100 percent in someone’s mind? I don’t get it.
Another
thing I’ve learned is that the price of gas is volatile. What goes up comes
down, and vice versa, always settling, in the end, somewhere around the
inflation-adjusted mean. Since March 30 the price of gas at that local station
has dropped 13 cents a gallon and is now lower than a year ago.
Let’s
not forget what happened in 2008. That summer the price of gas topped $4.60 a
gallon where we live, the highest price yet. By December of that same year,
following the economic collapse, the price briefly dipped under two dollars a
gallon before reverting to a more normal three dollars-plus the following
spring and summer. The oil-company-conspiracy theorists were noticeably quiet
during that period.
Politicians
are quick to use rising gas prices against incumbents, particularly the sitting
president. It’s a mug’s game for two reasons. The first is that presidents and
their policies have next to nothing to do with gas prices, though no one should
expect reality to enter into political argument. More importantly, as 2008
taught anyone who was paying attention, gas prices are so fluid that basing a
campaign on them is a high-risk proposition. What looks like a good line of
attack in March could look beyond stupid in October.
Last
month Linda and I took a short driving vacation for our wedding anniversary,
about 700 miles round-trip. The higher cost of gas, compared to last year,
drove up the expense by less than the cost of two lattes at the Headlands
Coffee House in Fort Bragg on a rainy Thursday afternoon. And you know what: I
wasted about as much time worrying about the price of gas as I did about the
price of a latte.
